On Wednesday, Marc Lamont Hill, a political commentator on CNN, delivered a speech to the United Nations in support of the Palestinian people. He advocated for their human rights, outlined how Israel denies Palestinians their basic liberties, and asked

On Wednesday, Marc Lamont Hill, a political commentator on CNN, delivered a speech to the United Nations in support of the Palestinian people. He advocated for their human rights, outlined how Israel denies Palestinians their basic liberties, and asked the international community to ‘commit to political action’.

The next day — under pressure from right-wing leaders and the Jewish establishment — CNN fired him.

This news is appalling. We are demanding that CNN reinstate Marc Lamont Hill because advocating for Palestinian rights should NOT be a fireable offense. In supporting Palestinian freedom, Marc Lamont-Hill was in no way being anti-semitic.

Marc Lamont Hill has spent much of his life fighting against racism and oppression in America. In a tweet responding to accusations against him, he said “I support Palestinian freedom. I support Palestinian self-determination. I am deeply critical of Israeli policy and practice. I do not support anti-Semitism, killing Jewish people, or any of the other things attributed to my speech. I have spent my life fighting these things”.

Especially in the Trump Era, it is dangerous to link advocating for Palestinian rights to anti-semitism. It distracts from real threats to Jewish community — the rise of white nationalism.

Unfortunately, the ADL already vilified Marc Lamont Hill for his criticism of Israeli policy. Once again we are seeing the American Jewish establishment censor conversations about Palestinian rights by falsely claiming antisemitism, and it is setting a terrifying precedent.

Meanwhile, CNN has not cut ties with many other frequent contributors who have expressed beliefs that are actually bigoted. For example, Rick Santorum, currently a senior political commentator at CNN, has such reactionary views on Israel that he has called Palestinians an “invented people.”

Just imagine being fired because you gave a speech that criticized Israel’s policy of Occupation and declared that Palestinian deserve basic human rights. That is why we as Jews are saying it is not antisemitic to demand freedom for the Palestinian people, and advocating for Palestinian human rights should not be a fireable offense.

We need a future where no one lives in fear of being fired for talking about Palestinian human rights and liberation. Demanding freedom and dignity for all Palestinians can also include demanding an end to antisemitism and white nationalism.

CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.

You can protest this outrageous firing at this petition site.

And here is a link to his book, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, which everyone should buy and read.

CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.

In his speech, Hill carefully explained all the ways in which Israeli Apartheid practices (my word, not his) devastate the basic human rights of the 5 million Palestinians living under Occupation. Not only are the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are of Palestinian heritage second class citizens (and, increasingly, third class citizens), but those kept under the jackboot of the Israeli military in the Palestinian West Bank and in Gaza are kept stateless and without even the right to have rights.

These crimes, epochal and unparalleled in our own time, are being committed by Binyamin Netanyahu and his henchmen in plain sight, violating every principle of agreed-upon international law in the post-1945 period. (I say unparalleled because I know of no other government on earth in the 21st century deliberately keeping millions of persons stateless and depriving them of citizenship. Some countries give minorities a citizenship many of the latter do not want, but they still do have a passport and property rights). Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and refuses to relinquish them or grant citizenship to the inhabitants, ensuring they remain in the twilight zone of statelessness. They are by far the largest stateless population in the world, (Undocumented migrants are not stateless since they have citizenship in their home country). The Nazis made Jews stateless as a prelude to the Holocaust.

One way that the Israeli right wing gets away with these atrocities is to use techniques of blackballing, smearing, and propaganda to marginalize any voices they don’t like. Jewish American mainstream organizations like the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco secretly have created web sites and techniques for getting people fired or blocking their career advancement if they aren’t on board with Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank. Canary Mission is even now targeting our undergraduate students, hoping to blight their lives for taking a stand for justice. I do not believe it is too much to say that Canary Mission is evil.

Pro-Israel bigots in the United States who freely speak about Arabs as “animals” or speak of “filthy Arabs” suddenly develop a saintly halo and accuse anyone who points to Netanyahu’s systematic dispossession of the Palestinians of being an anti-Semite. And they’ve been remarkably successful in marginalizing anyone who takes them on. They connive at unelecting congressmen and -women, they block appointments to the Federal government, and organize massive letter-writing campaigns to news outlets to pressure them into firing and blackballing journalists or changing the way they speak about Israeli colonizing activities. (The organization “CAMERA” targets journalists in particular).

This success is not because “Jews” are “powerful.” First of all, only a minority of Jewish Americans sympathize with the far right politics of the Likud Party. Jon Stewart used to complain tongue in cheek that if Jews were so powerful he ought to have been able to get off basic cable and have a network show.

The success is because right wing white people are so powerful, and many of them still have a latent belief in the goodness of colonialism and in the White Man’s Burden. Melanie McAlister argued brilliantly that for right wing Christian whites in the United States, the Israeli domination of the Palestinians is a symbolic reenactment of the Vietnam War, in which this time the “white people” (as they characterize themselves) win instead of losing. I.e., Israel functions as did those old Rambo movies. I was shocked to discover that my opposition to Bush’s Iraq War and critique of it as neo-colonialism was offensive to the Northeast power elite because they supported the war and apparently couldn’t deal with their unfaced assumption of racial superiority over Iraqis.

On the other side, a Christian Zionist such as Rick Santorum is paid to go on CNN and say things like, “If they want to negotiate with Israelis, and all the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis, they’re not Palestinians. There is no ‘Palestinian.’ This is Israeli land.”

That is all right in White America, but substitute Palestinians for Israelis and vice versa in Santorum’s vile quote and imagine what would happen to someone who said *that* on t.v.

Hill was raked over the coals by the bigoted and racist Israel lobbies for saying this:
“we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires. And that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

You will notice that Palestine, i.e. the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza (the Green parts), stretches from the river to the sea:

Map showing the occupied West Bank and GazaIt is interrupted by Israeli territory in between, of course.

Dishonest propagandists accused Hill of using the language of Hamas, which rejects Israel and has said, “Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north.” But you’ll note that Hill did not say anything about north to south.

Hill admittedly does not think a two-state solution is any longer plausible. But what he was calling for was for the people living in the Occupied territories to be full citizens, and to have these citizenship rights pertain to everyone living between the river and the sea. He did not say anything about Israelis not having equal rights.

It is not a firing offense to ask for Palestinians living between the river and the sea to enjoy the full rights of citizenship. In fact, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres pledged exactly that. Rabin shook Yasser Arafat’s and Bill Clinton’s hand over it on the White House lawn. Rabin was later assassinated by the sort of person now howling for Hill’s blood. Rabin’s vision of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution may well be impossible. That outcome has been engineered by Netanyahu and his thugs. But whatever the diplomacy, it cannot be allowed to keep Palestinians stateless and virtually without secure rights forever.

Hill was also slammed for urging Palestinian activism to oppose the Occupation. One of the standard Israeli propaganda techniques is to equate any resistance to their frankly fascist techniques of social control imposed on the colonized Palestinians with “terrorism.” There is nothing new or strange about this. The British in India considered Gandhi a terrorist. Of course the colonial state views opposition as terrorism.

That same dishonest columnist at The Forward managed to reconfigure Hill’s activism as violence. The fact is that international law recognizes the right of occupied peoples to mount even violent resistance to occupation militaries. But that isn’t what Hill was calling for. And then, any violence is then twisted around as violence toward civilians. And there you have it. Terrorism.

The only thing the Palestinians and their sympathizers can do to make Zionists happy is to bend over and allow themselves to be royally screwed– or better yet, allow themselves to be deported from their homeland of millennia at the hands of the Russian and Polish immigrants.

The Likudniks don’t actually want nonviolent resistance. That prospect horrifies them since they can’t do a magic circle number on it. When Mubarak Awad tried to start a center for Palestinian nonviolent resistance on the West Bank, the Israeli government illegally expelled him from his own home. One of the reasons the Israeli army is just shooting down unarmed Palestinians in cold blood inside Gaza is that they want to create the image of a violent confrontation where there is none (the marches have not involved clashes with the Israeli army).

CNN does a criminally negligent job of covering Palestine, giving us little better than Israeli propaganda. For the most part, it shapes the presentation of the story by simply ignoring it. But it also shapes the story with a systematically biased language intended to demonize the Palestinians and exonerate Israeli crimes against humanity.

Last March when Palestinians imprisoned in the open air concentration camp of Gaza by the Israeli army, navy and air force– and blockaded from key commodities– began marching to draw attention to their imprisonment, the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his officer corps decided to deal with these protests by shooting down unarmed protesters, many of them women and children, with live fire, on the Gaza side of the border. Using live ammunition on protesters is a war crime. All the civilized countries in the world should have withdrawn their ambassadors and slapped severe economic sanctions on the Netanyahu regime in response.

CNN’s reporting on one of the first such Israeli crimes? “Gaza: 17 Palestinians killed in confrontations with Israeli forces – CNN”. That makes it sound as though the dead Palestinians had come over to the Israeli side of the border and attacked Israeli “forces” (Israel has an army, let us call it an army). But there is a problem with this framing. Those shot down were on the Gaza side of the border and there has been no direct physical encounter with Israeli troops. The dozens of Palestinians shot down in cold blood and the hundreds shot and injured in these demonstrations since March have largely gone unreported at CNN. Otherwise there’d be a segment every Friday afternoon.

In the first six months of the ongoing weekly rallies, Mezan reported that “150 Palestinians have been killed in the demonstrations. At least 10,000 others have been injured, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition…”

Amnesty International notes that many of the injuries inflicted on the protesters are to lower limbs and that:
“According to military experts as well as a forensic pathologist who reviewed photographs of injuries obtained by Amnesty International, many of the wounds observed by doctors in Gaza are consistent with those caused by high-velocity Israeli-manufactured Tavor rifles using 5.56mm military ammunition. Other wounds bear the hallmarks of US-manufactured M24 Remington sniper rifles shooting 7.62mm hunting ammunition, which expand and mushroom inside the body.

The nature of these injuries shows that Israeli soldiers are using high-velocity military weapons designed to cause maximum harm to Palestinian protesters who do not pose an imminent threat to them. These apparently deliberate attempts to kill and maim are deeply disturbing, not to mention completely illegal. Some of these cases appear to amount to wilful killing, a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.”

Again, the weekly carnage committed by the Israeli army in direct violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of Occupied populations and in direct violation of the 2002 Rome Statute that created the International Court of Justice, is not covered by CNN. If you got your news from that source, you would not know anything is going on in Gaza.

Nor does CNN cover the tripling of Israeli squatter colonies on Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank during the Trump administration, nor the daily acts of violence, sabotage and usurpation committed by Israelis squatting on Palestinian land against Palestinians in their own homes.

This United Nations set of reports is what the real news from the Occupied Territories looks like.

If Netanyahu could shut the UN up, he would. His minions have shut up Marc Lamont Hill, a brave voice for freedom and human rights in our time who will now be replaced by the Rick Santorums.

Earlier today, CNN fired Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, prominent academic, author, activist, and television personality, in response to pressure from Israel advocacy groups. The news network was attacked after Hill gave a speech yesterday at the United Nations in defense of Palestinian rights, as part of the UN-organized International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

If you’d like to watch Dr. Hill’s speech, you can view it here.

Dr. Hill, who was named one of America’s most influential Black leaders by Ebony Magazine, frequently travels to Palestine and is a passionate supporter of Palestinian rights. He is an avid and outspoken advocate for freedom and equality for all people.

CNN has fired commentator Marc Lamont Hill for advocating for a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis in a speech at the United Nations. Hill believes that given the extent of settlement activity in Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, a two-state solution is no longer viable. That leaves two paths forward: A single state in which all citizens within the borders have equal rights, or a single state that operates on an apartheid model where some citizens have basic rights, while others are left in a second-class legal status.

CNN caved to pressure, wrongly saying Lamont Hill’s views are anti-Semitic and firing him on that false premise. Outside of the United States, a one-state solution is becoming a non-controversial suggestion, while here in the U.S., it is cause for firing from a job doing political commentary. Agree or disagree with Lamont Hill's proposal, his right to hold it is a bedrock principle.

You fired Marc Lamont Hill for advocating for a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis in a speech at the United Nations. Hill believes that given the extent of settlement activity in Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, a two-state solution is no longer viable. That leaves two paths forward: A single state in which all citizens within the borders have equal rights, or a single state that operates on an apartheid model where some citizens have basic rights, while others are left in a second-class legal status.

Some pro-Israel advocates argue that the former position -- one state with equal rights -- is anti-Semitic, because the Palestinian population within Israel will continue to grow and will ultimately amass a majority capable of taking democratic power and ending its status as a Jewish state. Outside of the United States, a one-state solution is becoming a non-controversial suggestion, while here in the U.S., it is cause for firing from a job doing political commentary. Agree or disagree with Lamont Hill's proposal, his right to hold it is a bedrock principle.

Marc Lamont Hill gave a beautiful speech at a United Nations event marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People this week.

For this, the Temple University professor and long-time advocate for Palestinian rights has been the target of an orchestrated political lynching by Israel lobby groups.

Smeared as an anti-Semite and grotesquely and falsely accused of calling for genocide against Jews, Hill was fired from his role as a political commentator for CNN.

The same Israel lobby operatives who bullied CNN into ending Hill’s contract are also demanding that he be fired from his teaching position.

The university has rebuffed these calls, citing Hill’s “constitutionally protected right to express his opinion as a private citizen.”

The accusations against Marc Lamont Hill are outright lies promoted by high-level operatives of the Israel lobby in their latest effort to silence and punish anyone who dares speak out in support of Palestinian equality and freedom from Israel’s brutal regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.

They perfectly match the kind of smear and sabotage tactics revealed in the censored Al Jazeera documentary on the US Israel lobby that was recently published in full by The Electronic Intifada.

Israel and its lobby see solidarity for Palestine from Black people as a particularly dangerous threat to be combatted with special zeal. It is no wonder that Jackie Walker, a Black Jewish anti-Zionist activist in Britain’s Labour Party, has likened the years-long smear campaign targeted at her by the Israel lobby to a lynching.

At the top of this page is the full video of Hill’s UN speech, published by the anti-Palestinian group UN Watch, no doubt in an effort to embarrass him.

You can also read a transcript.

Anyone familiar with Israel lobby defamation campaigns will not be surprised to learn that there is not one word of bigotry and of course nothing that can remotely be construed as a call for genocide.

Real solidarity

Rather, Marc Lamont Hill commits an even more unforgivable thought crime in the eyes of Israel and its lobby: he calls for effective solidarity with the Palestinian people on the basis that the full range of rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should apply to them no less than to any other people.

Hill also draws on the Black history of struggle against American state racism as a source of inspiration for that solidarity. His own words are worth quoting at length:

As a Black American, my understanding of action and solidarity action is rooted in our own tradition of struggle. As Black Americans resisted slavery, as well as Jim Crow laws that transformed us from a slave state to an apartheid state, we did so through multiple tactics and strategies. It is this array of tactics that I appeal to as I advocate for concrete action from all of us in this room.

Solidarity from the international community demands that we embrace boycotts, divestment, and sanctions as a critical means by which to hold Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinian people. This movement, which emerges out of the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society offers a nonviolent means by which to demand a return to the pre-1967 borders, full rights for Palestinian citizens and the right of return as dictated by international law.

Solidarity demands that we no longer allow politicians or political parties to remain silent on the question of Palestine. We can no longer in particular allow the political left to remain radical or even progressive on every issue from the environment to war to the economy. To remain progressive on every issue except for Palestine.

Contrary to Western mythology, Black resistance to American apartheid did not come purely through Gandhi and nonviolence. Rather, slave revolts and self-defense and tactics otherwise divergent from Dr. [Martin Luther] King or Mahatma Gandhi were equally important to preserving safety and attaining freedom.

We must allow – if we are to operate in true solidarity with Palestinian people, we must allow the Palestinian people the same range of opportunity and political possibility.

If we are standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we must recognize the right of an occupied people to defend itself. We must prioritize peace. But we must not romanticize or fetishize it.

We must advocate and promote nonviolence at every opportunity, but we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of state violence and ethnic cleansing.

Hill ended his speech with a call for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

The political lynch mob tried to spin these words as a genocidal call for the destruction of Israel.

But they are a simple recognition of reality: historic Palestine – what is today Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip – is not free between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

As a landmark UN report– quickly withdrawn under Israel lobby pressure – documented last year, the entire territory and the entire Palestinian people are subject to an “apartheid regime.”

The report found “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crimes of apartheid” as defined in international law.

With clarity and courage Marc Lamont Hill rightly stands by his principled words and we should stand by him – as many are doing.

Almost 5,000 people have already signed a petition demanding that CNN reinstate Hill.

Fake support for press freedom

Earlier this month, CNN and many of its defenders postured as defenders of press freedom and freedom of speech after the White House withdrew the pass of its correspondent Jim Acosta.

The Acosta affair was a cheap opportunity for pundits to pose as brave and courageous members of the #Resistance to Donald Trump.

But when freedom of speech really faces a test – as it so frequently does when it comes to Palestine – don’t expect to find too many of the same voices demanding that Hill’s right to ask difficult questions be respected and protected.

A critically important lesson from CNN’s firing of Marc Lamont Hill is that mainstream media will tolerate just about anything, from white supremacy to climate denial, but never clear, open and principled support for Palestinian rights.

That is a systemic problem and it underscores that only truly independent media free from corporate and state control can guarantee us the right to speak freely about Palestine and advocate for its liberation.

Monday December 3, 2018, 7:06 am
PLO: Solidarity with Palestinians not Just an Abstract Expression of Empathy.
November 30, 2018

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi said, while marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People that coincided on Thursday, that solidarity is not just an abstract expression of empathy; rather, it is an active, positive and concrete engagement.

“On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted Resolution 181 (II). Following the international community’s decision to adopt the Partition Plan, the suffering, dispossession, displacement, and victimization of the Palestinian people commenced as the state of Israel was established on the land of historical Palestine,” said Ashrawi in a statement.

“Seventy-one years later, the longest occupation in modern history persists while Israel continues to implement an official policy of unlawful unilateralism with a total disdain for international law and Palestinian human rights; such criminal behavior includes Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, its expropriation of Palestinian land and resources, the deliberate targeting of peaceful protestors in the besieged Gaza Strip, the cultural, historical, demographic, and territorial distortion of Jerusalem, and the eviction and deportation of Palestinians from their homes and land, among other violations. Such Israeli measures, which have been emboldened by the current US administration’s disastrous moves and decision-making, constitute a total negation of the most basic requirements for peace, stability and security.”

Ashrawi added, “Today also marks the forty-first anniversary of the UNGA’s designation of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. On this occasion, we extend our gratitude to the individual governments and parliaments worldwide that have recognized us, as well as the political parties, representatives of civil society, churches, solidarity and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) groups, and others who have worked tirelessly in the service of the cause of a just peace and in defense of the Palestinians, a people in captivity and exile, and their right to live in freedom and dignity.”

However, stressed the PLO official, “Solidarity is not just an abstract expression of empathy; rather, it is an active, positive and concrete engagement. It should send a strong and important message to both the Palestinian people and to the global community that there is a price to be paid for Israel’s persistent violations of international law and conventions. Simultaneously, it would be assuring the Palestinian people of the protection available to them in the international legal and political system. The injustice which began in 1948 must come to end.”

Monday December 3, 2018, 4:19 pm
Report: Israel committed 811 violations against Palestinian journalists in 2018 .
December 3, 2018
The Palestinian Ministry of Information said Israel has committed 811 violations against Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the beginning of 2018.

The ministry said in a report yesterday that its monitoring unit has documented 282 violations in the Gaza Strip and 529 violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In its report, the ministry documented the killing of two journalists, Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein, by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

The ministry also documented 345 incidents of physical assaults on journalists and 162 incidents in which journalists appeared in court.

The report explained that the Israeli army has wounded 80 journalists while covering the “Great March of Return” since March.

READ: Palestinian MP calls to expel Israel from the International Federation of Journalists

Israeli authorities have prevented 100 journalists from performing their duties while the Israeli army closed and threatened to close 54 media institutions, the report said, adding that the army has raided 58 media institutions and their equipment was destroyed.

In November, the Israeli army destroyed the headquarters of Al-Aqsa TV channel in the Gaza Strip.

According to the report, 48 Palestinian journalists were tortured in prisons, and 42 others were banned from travelling.

According to the report, the month of May witnessed the highest number of violations against journalists in the West Bank and Gaza.

A Palestinian doctor whose three daughters and niece were killed in an Israeli airstrike, and who was giving a live report on Israeli television when he received the news of his family being killed, has been told by an Israeli court in Beersheva that he will receive no compensation.

The court ruled that the bombing of the family was justified.

At the time, and for a number of years afterward, Dr. Ezzeddin Abu al-Aish was working in an Israeli hospital treating Israeli patients. He had long argued for coexistence and peace, and even after the killing of his family by an Israeli missile, he went on speaking tours with Israeli peace activists and argued for forgiveness.

The Israeli military claimed, and the court accepted the claim, that there were ‘weapons stored in Abu al-Aish’s home’ – a claim which he said was absurd, and for which they offered no evidence. Despite the lack of evidence, the Israeli court in Beersheva ruled that the Israeli military was not responsible for the killing of the family with their missile.

On November 25th, just a week before the court ruling, Dr. al-Aish had travelled to Israel from Canada, where he now lives, for a peace conference. He told the conference attendees that he was still optimistic for peace. He pointed out that kids who are fifteen years old now in Gaza have gone through three wars, and have no hope.

During the court hearing, a spokesperson for the Israeli Army admitted that on February 4, 2009, a Golani infantry force that was under fire said they believed they saw ‘Hamas watchdogs’ near the Abu al-Aish family home. Because of that, they called in an airstrike, which flattened the house and all inhabitants within it.

According to the report, the Israeli military was “saddened by the damage caused” to the family, but claimed that “the activities of the forces and the decision to bomb the building were reasonable.”

In 2009, Dr. Abu al-Aish was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. After working in Israel for many years, always advocating for peace, he is now an assistant professor at the Dala Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada.

When his daughters and niece were killed, Dr. Abu al-Aish happened to be giving a live report in Hebrew on Israeli Channel 10, as he had done every day throughout the 2009 Israeli invasion without compensation, because he wanted the Israeli audience to hear what it was like on the ground in Gaza when the Israeli military attacked.

The Israeli audience heard him live via phone as he got the news of the bombing, and he managed to sob through the phone, “I want to know why my daughters were harmed. This should haunt (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert his entire life.” He added that his daughters were “armed only with love.”

Al-Aish’s daughters who were killed were: 22-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayer and 14-year old Aya. His niece who was killed was 14-year-old Nour Abu al-Aish.

In a recent interview with the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, Dr. Abu al-Aish’s lawyer said, “The Israeli legal system is not efficient when it deals with Palestinians. There are endless hindrances they put in front of them.”

In order to launch his lawsuit, Dr. Abu al-Aish was required to post a bond of 20,000 Israeli shekels ($7,000) for each of his daughters and his niece.

Meanwhile, according to The Daily Star, Abu al-Aish has set up a foundation in memory of his daughters and niece, called Daughters for Life. He had intended to use any financial compensation from Israel to further the foundation’s goals, which include building schools for young women in the Middle East, as well as a school for First Nations women in Canada.

“I will never give up,” he told the Star. “I will never forget my daughters. I am living for them.”

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Israeli Supreme Court ruled, on Wednesday, to grant ownership of Palestinian land, located near the illegal Israeli settlement of Gush Etzion, south of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank, to the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Sources also reported that Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal filed by Palestinian owners of the confiscated land against a previous decision ordered by the District Court in Jerusalem, stating that JNF has ownership of the land in question.

Sources added that JNF claimed it had obtained ownership of the land since 1944 after purchasing it from a Palestinian family that emigrated to Latin America.

It is noteworthy that the illegal Rosh Tzurim settlement and the council offices of the Gush Etzion settlement were already built on the 522 dunams prior to the ruling.

Additionally, Palestinians were banned from entry to the lands, although they possess ownership rights from decades ago. In some cases, Palestinian owners were allowed entry once to twice a year, in order to pick olive harvest.

According to settlement watchdog Peace Now, in the year and a half since President Trump took office some 14,454 units in the West Bank has been approved, which is more than three times the amount that was approved in the year and half before his inauguration (4,476 units).

Since the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 1967, between 500,000 and 600,000 Israelis have moved into Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, in violation of international law.

The estimated 196 government recognized Israeli settlements scattered across the Palestinian territory are all considered illegal under international law.

WASHINGTON (Ma'an) -- Arab-Americans expressed, on Friday, support of journalist Marc Hill, who was fired from the American news network, CNN, for expressing pro-Palestine views.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) condemned, in a statement, CNN's decision against Marc Hill, describing it as shameful, while commending Hill for "advocating for equal political and human rights for the Palestinian people."

"ADC is proud to stand with Dr. Marc Lamont Hill for defending equal rights for the Palestinian people. ADC condemns in the strongest terms the abhorrent decision by CNN to fire Dr. Hill from his position as a commentator with the network. Dr. Hill continuously stands in support of human rights, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people -- the very principles which got him fired. It is outrageous that CNN would fire Dr. Hill simply for his position that the Palestinian people are entitled to have full equal rights and protection under the law. The action taken by CNN is a shameful decision and contradictory to the networks supposed principles of fairness and fact telling."

During an event organized by the United Nations, commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Hill gave a compelling and comprehensive testimony describing Israel's ongoing decades-long assault and occupation of the Palestinian people.

Throughout his testimony, he outlined the institutional forms of discrimination and racism that the Palestinian people experience on a daily basis.

"CNN provides platforms to commentators who regularly make anti-Arab and xenophobic remarks. One of their regular commentators is former Senator Rick Santorum who routinely denies the existence of Palestinians as a people. CNN still refuses to take any action against Santorum.
This is one example of many in which the network has ignored racist commentary, and instead provides a platform for those like Santorum to continue their campaign of dehumanizing Arabs and Palestinians," said the largest Arab American grassroots and civil rights organization in the United States.

"ADC stands firm in support of Dr. Hill's call to the international community to uphold the principles of human rights and international law for all peoples. The Palestinian people cannot be an exception to human rights or the principle of equality. It is the obligation and duty of the international community to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing violations against the Palestinian people and ensure the protection of their rights," concluded the statement.

Tuesday December 4, 2018, 7:51 pm
Thank you for supporting Marc Lamont Hill and telling CNN that advocating for Palestinian rights should not be a fireable offense. We'll keep you updated on this campaign as things progress so keep an eye out for emails from us.

Tuesday December 4, 2018, 10:20 pm
Shot In the Head, His Back to Soldiers.

On Tuesday, hundreds of mourners carried Habali's body through the streets for funeral prayers.Photos by Majdi Mohammed/AP

Israeli soldiers just shot and killed Muhammad Habali, a 22-year-old disabled man, as he walked home from work in Tulkarem, in the northern occupied West Bank, during a late-night raid on the neighborhood. After leaving his job at a coffee shop, Habali crossed a street where Israeli forces were attacking residents and local Palestinians were trying to defend their homes - or, in the words of the IDF, "a violent riot was instigated and dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks at IDF troops, (who) responded with riot dispersal means and later on with live fire." They shot Habali with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the groin before shooting him again in the head. According to his older brother Alaa Hussam - and video footage - "His back was towards the soldiers. He was walking away from them." Habali, who had difficulty speaking, lived with seven siblings and was "simple and quiet...always helping people."

The assault on Tulkarem was one of almost nightly raids by Israeli forces in occupied territories, usually between midnight and dawn, ostensibly to search for "wanted" Palestinians and potential attackers but largely to terrorize an already beleaguered people. Often illegally crossing into areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the raids are catastrophically successful: According to Palestinian sources, in November alone the IDF killed 24 Palestinians (mostly in Gaza), arrested 260, including children, and issued 33 deportation orders. Thus have Israeli forces "repeatedly violated...international law by responding to stone-throwing protests by using excessive force," says Amnesty International, and the murder of innocents like Muhammad Habali is "nothing new." From Yousef Munayyer to the willfully incognizant CNN and others in U.S. media who cling to the illusion of Israel as "the holy of holies": "From the River to the Sea, Israel practices Apartheid. If you are more bothered by people calling for freedom and equality between the river and the sea than the actual horrific reality on the ground there, maybe the problem is with you.

TULKAREM (Ma'an) -- Palestinian crowds marched in the funeral of Muhammad Habali, 22, on Tuesday noon, in Tulkarem City in the northern occupied West Bank.

Habali was shot and killed by Israeli forces on predawn Tuesday; Israeli forces shot Habali with a rubber-coated steel bullet in the leg before shooting him a second time in the head, causing him a critical injury.

Hundreds of Palestinians carried Habali's body on shoulders from the Thabet Thabet Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, in Tulkarem City to his family home before burial took place at the al-Shuhada cemetery in the city.

Locals told Ma'an that Habai is a disabled man who worked at a coffee shop in the city until late night hours.

“All he’s saying is that Palestinian babies deserve the same rights as Israeli babies”.

Story Transcript

JAISAL NOOR: Supporters are coming to the defense of Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill, whose abrupt firing from CNN is causing backlash.

The news network let Hill go after a speech Wednesday during the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

MARC LAMONT HILL: As we speak, the conditions on the ground for Palestinian people are worsening. In recent decades, the Israeli government has moved further and further to the right, normalizing settler colonialism and its accompanying logics of denial, destruction, displacement, and death. Despite international condemnation, settlement expansion has continued.

JAISAL NOOR: CNN might not be the only organization parting ways with Hill. Temple University, where Hill is a tenured professor, is reportedly also considering severing ties. In particular, critics noted the end of Hill’s speech.

MARC LAMONT HILL: So as we stand here on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the tragic commemoration of the Nakba, we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words, but to commit to political action. Grassroots action. Local action. And international action that will give us what justice requires. And that is a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.

JAISAL NOOR: Critics say “a free Palestine, from the river to the sea” is a Hamas slogan calling for the destruction of Israel. But as Hill notes, the phrase pre-dates Hamas’ creation by decades; and Hill has consistently supported a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

To discuss the backlash against Hill and the implications for supporters of Palestinian rights, we caught up with Cornel West.

CORNEL WEST: The important thing is we’ve got to stand with my dear brother Marc. All he’s saying is a Palestinian baby has exactly the same value as a Jewish baby; Jewish baby has the same value as a Palestinian baby. If we can’t have an egalitarian understanding of what it is for a people that have to struggle under ugly occupation on the one hand, and folk who themselves have been hated and despised, but have a responsibility to treating other people with dignity, in this case Palestinians, and to the degree to which we still are unable to have that kind of public dialogue recognizing the humanity on both sides is the degree to which we find ourselves impoverished. So I want to stand very closely and intensely with my dear brother Marc.

JAISAL NOOR: Hill has been accused of being a Hamas supporter, even though he embraces non-violent resistance like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

MARC LAMONT HILL: Solidarity with the international community demands that we embrace boycotts, divestment, and sanctions as a critical means by which to hold Israel accountable for its treatment of Palestinian people. This movement, which emerges out of the overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society, offers a nonviolent means by which to demand a return to the pre-’67 borders, full rights for Palestinian citizens, and the right of return as dictated by international law.

JAISAL NOOR: His comments are being equated with support for Hamas. What’s your response to that?

CORNEL WEST: Everybody knows that brother Marc is not a supporter of Hamas. You can love Palestinian people, you can support their rights and their dignity, and that doesn’t mean you’re a supporter of Hamas. I love Palestinian brothers and sisters. I support their dignity. I support their rights. That doesn’t mean that I’m a supporter of Hamas. And for somebody to make that kind of jump is ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And I just find it sad that people would stoop to that level, to try to attack my brother or anybody else who stands with the Palestinian people. We would do exactly the same thing if there were a Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters. That wouldn’t mean we supported Irgun, or a Jewish group killing innocent people. But we would support any people who are occupied. Kashmir. Tibet. Any people who are occupied. That includes our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters. So I’m very, very—in deep solidarity with brother Marc.

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